Studio Update – August
Last engine in motion (for now)
It’s been a busy few months and near the front of my mind has been that I had not written anything down about it. I often find this cathartic and a great way of looking back on the things I’ve done and reassuring myself that I am not spending my days not doing anything worthwhile because im not slaving away in a corporate environment, which is still how my brain measures ‘worthwhile’ work.
So, a quick update. The jewellery upselling, which I don’t really reference on here is nearly at full strength for where I was planning on getting it to, which suggests to me that this is the first proof of concept to have worked how I hoped it would. It’s not particularly glamourous work but it’s started to take on some repair aspects as well to create some interesting pieces and therefore I still get to be creative in making new things out of scrap. Which is great since I had to shelve the larger scale upcycling, it still lets me exercise my brain in the same way, just on a much smaller scale.
It has also proven to me that when people see pieces I make, they do buy as a few pieces on there I have made myself from scratch. Which leads me to what I have been most occupied with this month. My new jewellery brand, dasIMperfeKt which is running on Etsy alongside my shop full of felts and clay which is of course named for this site Art Me Anything.
Etsy’s algorithm is pretty brutal, you can seemingly have as many listings as you like but Etsy does not give two shiny sh**s unless you bring it some traffic yourself, so this has led to the launch of Instagram for both of these shops (as well as for my ‘higher brow’ art being included on the Art Me Anything Instagram.) Making reels is quite good fun though so I am not as put off by the idea of social media as I was before. Added to this is me having turned off comments on the Youtube shorts channel im also posting them to. One video, post in lots of place.
From what I’ve read, you have to post for months on end before anyone notices on you on these platforms to. To be honest writing this blog to no one has gotten me quite used to that – It’s a good job I like the sound of my own voice!
Gainful Employment
So, now we have two Etsy shops, a resell shop, a conceptual art practice as well as a part time job. It’s all quite novel and I have gotten into the swing of all the things that are required. It leaves not that much time to do actual art so this is now being done as and when I have a free evening which I’m finding helps me wind down. So admin and publicity as well as gainful employment in the day, create at night. Not the way round I thought it would go, but there we are. Go with the flow.
Of course, I still have the matter of having to pay the bills. Once again the last few weeks, when doing some favours for my employer days were whole days and I was reminded again that I couldn’t work full time even if I wanted to and so one way or another I’ll find a way to make sure all of these creative endeavours work. In the meantime however, we’ve got several threads of consulting and online work that are helping the savings not drain too severely! But I won’t sit here and say it’s easy to trust that it will all come good but I do have the feeling that it will, I’ve always managed to get through before and this time it’s actually fun. First time Ive been able to say that in a long time.
So there we are, a new jewellery brand which is based on not fitting in, on being unique and to reflect that we’re not all perfect. I’ll dedicate a post to the philosophy some other time, but the bonus here is a mean the marketing words I say, which is the only way I can conjure them up.